Thursday 28th February, 2019

Tema, Feb. 28, GNA - The Tema Central Sewerage
System, after 18 years of no major rehabilitation work, is now a highly
compromised engineering system that could plunge Tema into an unimaginable
health and environmental disaster soon.

Breakages along portions of the pipelines and
manholes are evident as rodents and other creatures have found a home in them
to feed and to breed.

Residents, schools, hotels and other
establishments in the Tema Metropolis had to live with the stench and in some cases
spillage of faeces on their premises from the dysfunctional lines choked with
waste oil and sludge from factories and garages as well as solid waste
materials such as rugs and tampons from households.

Pastor Emmanuel Geadda-Asando, Project Co-ordinator
for the advocacy to get the sewerage system rehabilitated, said although the
Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) had on countless occasions given the assurance
of rehabilitating the sewer lines, nothing had been done to address the
worsening situation.

Pastor Geadda-Asando, who showed the media
some of the chocked and faulty lines, said, “The TMA has only, as an act of
insensitivity, taken unilateral decision to annually impose an exploitative
charges on users in the name of sewerage maintenance fees”.

He indicated that the advocacy project which
was funded by BUSAC Fund and supported by DANIDA, USAID and EUROPEAN Union, was
therefore appealing to government to step in to rectify the issue to save the
image and health of the harbour and industrial city.

Pastor Geadda-Asando, who is also the Vice
President of Ghana Progressive Hotels Association (GHAPROHA), said it was
obvious that TMA was not in a position to rehabilitate the central sewerage
system which served the Tema Metropolis and Tema West Municipality.

“We were assured that in December, work will
start. Unfortunately, we are in February going onto March but nothing has been
done, ”he said.

Members of GHAPROHA disclosed that the stench
from the sewer lines and poor sanitary conditions had drastically lowered
occupancy rate of hotels and restaurants in Tema from an estimated national
average of 60 per cent to 40 per cent over the last five years.

“Restaurants and hotels have become helpless
as we are unable to maintain the required food safety and hygiene standards in
an environment where raw faecal matter flows uncontrollably into kitchens,
restaurants and hotel rooms. Guests cannot stand the stench, let alone the
unsightly spectacle of raw faeces”.

They added that the hospitality industry spent
about GH¢3,277,900 annually to hire services of artisans and environmental
officers to undertake diverse activities such as routine rodding of choked
pipes, desilting choked drains and sealing of sewer lines and broken manholes.

Mr Stephen M. Ayayee, Executive Director of
Joecarl Hotel, on his part, called on the TMA to properly construct the storm
drain behind his facility that carried waste water from Communities Six and 10.

According to him, the place was breeding
mosquitoes, rodents and snakes and that they spent a lot of money to do
frequent fumigation.